What's To Watch? - May 12-18 - Popcorn & Chewing Gum

 

     An exhausting week, and plenty still in play between me and the weekend. When I'm not feeling tasked by workplace issues, it's health concerns and ongoing battles with medical insurance and related matters. But enough of my ritual complaining. (Yeah, right.)

     My nominal leisure time's felt odd, too, with me often defaulting to weird, low-level, obsessive binging of things I hadn't really been interested in. It's a somewhat narcotic reflex when the rest of life

is feeling oppressive and threatening, which it has been. (I really keep looping back around to the complaining.) This has been going on at least in the margins for the past several weeks, and has curiously seen me moving through all twelve seasons of The Big Bang Theory, and then through most of its still ongoing prequel series, Young Sheldon. It all reminds me that if I give something half a chance I can find something to latch onto. There's an odd safety in it. Terribly wasteful of time, but it's a linear activity, and it makes for an easy go-to item if I wake up at 2AM with no driving ambition

beyond briefly getting up to indulge my bladder and then go back to bed and lose myself in some more episodes until I catch myself starting to drift. It momentarily keeps me from fretting over what's lurking for me in the daylight hours.
     Having taken it all in in such a concentrated form BBT constitutes a great deal of future knowledge for the characters in YS, including some ominous bits about the family members, leaving me to wonder how tight the series outline plans are for the still-ongoing prequel series. People have mortgages, and generally crave secured incomes, and people involved in long-running shows - on both sides of the camera - tend to become like extended families, so the desire to run with it as long as possible is a natural one. That tends to be the enemy of a tight narrative, and sets a show up to outlive it welcome, to degrade and diminish, until it shuts down as an alternative to being canceled. There have to be thoughts of where they'll want this to series to end, presumably with the main action having come to the doorstep of where The Big Bang Theory began, and likely with some stronger taste from the post-BBT future for that show's cast, to really milk the nostalgia and give a final pay-off for the fans who followed both shows. Whether that aspect will go beyond the narrative voice-overs, we'll see when the time comes. At the moment I only know that they got the nod for fifth, sixth, and seventh seasons all at the same time just over two years ago.
     The production and streaming service aspects of the shows throws me a little, as I'd have casually expected them to both be on Paramount +, but all twelve seasons of BBT and the first five of YS are instead on HBO Max, with just the current, set-to-wrap next Thursday (the 18th) on CBS, sixth season of YS, which is on Paramount+.

     I've nary a clue as to what to expect when it comes to how long the Writers Guild strike will run. So far, I've seen that it's impacted the then-ongoing production of season four of the Paramount+ series Evil - one of several shows I'd realized I had thought must have finished season filming much earlier, and expected to find would be soon. Now I see that's not the case. Between the Writers' strike and an unnamed cast member having some family issues to deal with, filming wrapped early.
     Picketers disrupted the shoot, leading reportedly "pissed" producers to stew for hours before finally folding and sending the crew - that had been standing by for  the previous day - home around 1 AM the following day.
     I can't see how they'll have enough material to cut into the planned, 10-episode fourth season, so it remains to be seen whether they'll cut what they have into a truncated season, or hope for a strike settlement and aim to finish the shooting schedule as originally planned... just later.

    As planned last Saturday, I got out to see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 that morning.
     James Gunn delivered another broad sweep of emotions, and got to see this crew of characters through to the seeming end of their story as a group, and along the way got the full backstory for Rocket. We know it's not the last we'll be seeing of some of these characters, but we also know that Dave Bautista (Drax) and Zoe Saldana (Gamora) have declared that they're finished with those roles. Gunn himself has been under contract over at Warner Bros. since this past November, and so at least through most of 2026 is all about DC comics screen adaptations, his Marvel/Disney chapter satisfying closed for at least the easily foreseeable future. All that and a villain everyone could hate.

     A little intense on the animal cruelty front, but it fit.
     I enjoyed the film enough to be interested in getting to see it another time on the big screen, rather than waiting months for when it finally arrives for Disney+ streaming. That's been feeding into thoughts of giving either Regal or AMC movie theater's "unlimited" plans a try, where I'd be paying a set amount per month to be able to go see movies as often as I can manage. Part of it's curiosity, part of it's that chewing gum/popcorn activity of seeking a refuge from other worries, and, in a very similar vein, part of it's a rush to get an advance taste of retirement.
     If I do make the move to try either of those movie access programs, I'll be running through the good and bad of them on future Fridays, along with the movies themselves.

    Next Wednesday Ant Man & the Wasp: Quantumania will finally arrive on Disney+ (one day after sale of DVD and Blu-Ray editions). I'm interested in seeing how it plays for me on a second view.

     For lighter, distracting fun of an all-ages sort, I'll be interested to check out the recently-arrived, ten-episode, musical Muppets series on Disney+: The Muppets Mayhem

     The all-ages aspect really is something the Muppets continue to do so well, and this somewhat parody of how the music industry at least was, seems to be no exception. In a move that's much more a Netflix move than a Disney+ one, they opted to drop all ten episodes at once. They're mostly just under half an hour each, so it's a little under five hours run time total.

     Over on Hulu, as part of the FX on Hulu brand, a new series with a focus on the hot topic of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and the potentially dehumanizing impact of technology is the FBI procedural limited series Class of '09.

     The first two episodes arrived this week.
     It looks interesting enough that I'll likely want to jump on these first two episodes and ride it out week to week. I have too many other series currently in play that I haven't caught up on, hence the sparse selection here this week.

     Wanting to close on an open to all note, I'll fall back on Tubi.
     From April 11, 1980, though April 28th of 1982, ABC assembled a group of comedians with the intent of creating their own version of NBC's Saturday Night Live. Getting a jump on it a day earlier, it was Fridays. In general they attempted to push the envelope with "edgier" material, with mixed results. One person's "edgy" tends to be someone else's "bad taste."
     It debuted the final year for SNL's original group of Not Ready For Prime Time Players, and was initially mostly dismissed as a poor imitation. The following season, with SNL having a disastrous season with the new cast and showrunner, Fridays started to get a second look, with many critics warming up to it. It only
    With a cast including future stars Larry David and Michael Richardson, and, as with SNL, featured musical guests, my own memories of it are, similarly, a mixed bag. Here's a first season opening credits sequence, where it clearly comes across as SNL on a budget.

     Under the title of The Best of Fridays, Tubi has a cross-section of admittedly trimmed-down episodes I'll be aiming to make some time for.
      
     Next Friday I'll be tied up with a medical procedure, so whatever I'll be posting here is something I'll be setting up ahead of time. Aside from anything that really catches my interest between now and then, I'm thinking I'm overdue for a broad sweep of quick looks ahead for new and returning series, especially as much seems to be headed our way in June... which will be here sooner than it may feel here in the first half of May. Until then, though, enjoy what you can. -- Mike